Fireflies

Dead Man Walking

     Her head swam, her body followed quietly. Silently.

...

     Lifting my eyelids takes more effort than I thought it would, and I seem to be in darkness when I do. A single flame lights atop my pointer finger and my eyes look around this now barely lit room, which I find empty except for a few shelves with junk littered on them. There's something in my arm, so I pull it out before looking only to find that there's now blood forming where the needle was. Needle. Vein. What happened... oh gosh, I threw up in the bat cave, where I most likely still am.

     Panic begins to set in as I sit up and run my other hand along my face to find that I'm still wearing my mask. Oh my goodness, my amazing beautiful, identity hiding mask. Pushing myself off the bed I'm on, I slip over to the door on the other side of the room. Before I can figure out how to open it, the metal slides upwards, my flame goes out, and whoever comes in gets a nasty surprise because my elbow thrusts into their nose and my knee collides with their stomach. Leaving them behind me, I run into a hallway to find that I'm definitely not in the bat cave. Shouts of surprise follow me from where I came, causing my pulse to accelerate and my legs to match it's beat. Just as I'm about to reach some sort of exit a yellow blur almost knocks me onto my back.

     "W- Wally?" He pauses with wide eyes.

     "How would you know-?" I push past him and my own surprise while raising my body temperature to a scalding heat so that when he tries to grab me he instantly let's go, cursing under his breath and cradling his burnt fingers. I had melted his suit.

     "Sorry KF, but I'm not staying for dinner." What would the young justice team want with me anyways? I already told Artemis that I didn't want to join because of certain... things. I make it to the large circular whole in the wall, which I'm assuming is a boom tube, I insert a code that will drop me off in Gotham and just as I whirl away a figure in red collides with me.

     Both the figure and I tumble out of a phone booth and onto the grey, trash strewn, cement of the Dark Knight's city. The clink of handcuffs reaches my ears and my mind narrows. Suddenly I'm kicking, scratching, dare I say biting, to get away from any sort of detainment.

     "Gosh, stop squirming, will ya?" I pull away from him to find that I'm standing face to face with Roy.

     "What the heck, Roy?!" Both of my hands erupt into flames, "Also, your haircut is horrible." It's a buzz cut, why would he ever get a buzz cut?

     "I don't even know you." The disgust on his face hurts, and I don't understand why he doesn't recognize me.

     "It's me, Firefly, you sort of helped me out a couple months ago with that... problem." He shakes his head and his arm transforms into some sort of robotic gun thing.

     "No clue what you're talking about." I jump aside just as a ball of energy soars towards me.

     "Arsenal!" That's definitely not Roy's code name. Dick has emerged from the slightly damaged telephone booth with his escrima sticks in hand. "Back down!" So said Arsenal basically bares his teeth like some sort of wolf and growls like one too.

     "She attacked one of our own, Gar was bleeding!" His anger is radiating in waves and seems to be contagious.

     "It isn't her fault, and you know it," his returned growl barely escapes his clenched teeth, and he stops for a split second to shoot me a sympathetic look before turning back to Arsenal, "So I'm going to say it again, back DOWN!" This may not be the best time for me to book it, but there never really is a definite "good" time for that sort of thing. I begin to take a step back, but they both start at the movement and Dick raises his eyebrows.

     "Wait, Firefly, I need to ask you...," I play with the idea of a smirk, which I'm sure hints on my face, while taking another step back and pulling the grappling hook out of my, no longer egg filled, fanny pack.

     I shrug,"I'll come back around someday, oh, and I'm sorry about Gar." and with the click of a trigger I'm flying through the Gotham city buildings.

...

     He was almost infatuated with her. Everyone had always said he had had a thing for redheads.

...

     "Why'd you let her get away?!" OG Roy's voice was beginning to irritate me to my already frayed ends.

     "We need to get back to the Mountain." Obviously furious, OG Roy storms into the telephone booth and is gone in a blink. I pick something up off the street, follow after him and am met by several upset Young Justicers. Is that even the term? 

     "We have to talk." It's Wally, and I completely agree.

     "Yeah, meet me in the conference room with M'gann, Superboy, and Robin, I'll grab Batgirl." I find her reading something in bed and motion for her to come with me.

     The conference room is colder than I remember and I catch myself thinking that if Firefly were here it wouldn't be.

     "So..." Wally starts the meeting, "is Firefly a villain, or a potential ally?" I can feel the brick of metal and glass I picked up weighing in my pocket.

     "For the moment, an ally," several furrowed eyebrows at my saying this, but only from the three who didn't even know who she was before the past two days.

     "Either way, we're going to have to tail her or something," Several nods towards Wally's statement, "She's dangerous, and she knows who we are." I forgot about that.

     "I already have someone-" Wally cuts me off.

     "Not... not him, we need someone else." The rope of our friendship is being pulled taught and I can't help but feel like someone is trying to cut it.

     "Listen, I respect you Wally, but he's already been keeping tabs on her for a while, I don't see why he can't continue." Tension has already hardened the air and now both Tim and Babs are uncomfortably staring at the table.

     "Because he's not one of us, he's not trustworthy, and has yet to prove himself as much." A spark of anger lights in my chest, and I'm sure Firefly had some part in it, but I quickly douse it.

     "I will also keep up with her, but I'm not going to tell Red Hood to stop, he saved her life the other day and we need him anyways. Even if he won't join the team and occasionally goes off the deep end." It almost seems like a sigh of relief follows my decision to not react negatively to his claims. He sighs in a tired way that mirrors the exact way that I've felt throughout this entire situation.

     "I'm going to try to convince her to join the team, ok?" His somber expression turns into a pressed smirk and he nods his head, albeit reluctantly. Movement onto the table draws my eye from his face to his hand.

     "She was able to burn through a fireproof suit and not burn her own clothes at the same time," the burns were already almost healed, but the sight of them churned my blood a little, "I hope you can recruit her before someone else does, for our's and her sake." I hope it would never come to us facing her as enemies, but who knows what will happen with her.

     She was such a wildcard. Leaving some sort of... it looked like an i-touch, behind just to mess with him, or for something else entirely. He would have to get away to look at the device from everyone else's prying eyes, but what Wally had said about her powers being spectacular, well, not the exact word he had used. More like dangerous in the wrong hands, and if they couldn't get her on their side, then there was always the chance of someone using her.